Standing Rigging Material

I'm new to the forum, so please excuse me if this has been covered in previous posts.

Four friends of mine and I are building Voyager II boats to race amongst ourselves. I gather from reading other psost that the line included in the kit for standing rigging is not up to the task, and most people are substituting braided Spectra 90# line. My question is, does this application really require 90# test? Seems awfully high, and that line is pretty large in diameter. I'd prefer to use something in the 30#-40# ranger, which is about 1/2 the diameter.

Standing rigging

An inexpensive and long term solution is to use 30# test STEELON plastic covered, stranded stainless steel leader wire available from several fishing supply web sites. The crimped swaging sleeves used to terminate the wire at fittings acts as a weak link in the event of a collision, and will allow the wire to pull through without jerking a fitting out of the mast or deck. Since one piece of the wire is strong enough to lift an entire 25 pound EC-12 it is more than strong enough for any boat of that size or smaller.

I concur with Mr Carr about using SS leader wire. I think the reason for using larger diameter Spectra (if you choose that route) is because the smaller stuff can tend to slip in the bowsies that most use to tension it. Also, at least in big boats, when you get close to Spectra's max tensile strength, it tends to "creep" (permanently elongate). Not really an issue in areas where you adjust it all the time, but not good for standing rigging.

If I were to go with the nylon covered SS wire, I'd need a crimping tool and the fittings, correct? Also, and maybe this isn't worth worrying about, doesn't the SS wire give you a lot more weight aloft relative to the spectra?

So pissed off, took my TT ETNZ out today and ripped the top of the Jib, was only 3 knots of wind at the marina, luckily a man working on his boat saved me and retreived my ETNZ, otherwise i would have been swimming, at least she was watertight.

I realised i had the jib to tight, when i sheeted in it was to much pressure and ripped out the top cleat, I have now run a forestay to the front of the jib boom, and another sheet line straight down from the mast to the back of the Job boom, also ran a line through the front of the jib itself to ensure only the wind could possibly do it damage. Rigging instructions are weak at best.

All detail photos are from my own boat. Some vids and pictures also on that set. Feel free to ask for details on the comments of each picture in flickr, in this same forum, or at the build log I did here (spanish):